Against all odds, the Comprehensive Smoking Prevention and Control Plan 2024-2027 came out this Friday from the Interterritorial Council with the support of the communities, including those governed by the PP. The agreement was possible thanks to several commitments made by the Minister of Health, Mónica García, before the PP advisors, and also after calls for consensus by health organizations and scientific societies had been repeated in the last few hours. Sources from the regional government confirm that the Region of Murcia supports the document after the changes proposed by García.
The new measures that will regulate tobacco consumption in Spain will still take time to come into force. The pact is a “road map” that will be finalized when the Congress of Deputies approves a new law whose path will begin to be followed “very soon,” explained the Minister of Health, Mónica García, after the meeting of the Interterritorial Health Council.
The meeting between the Ministry and the communities, which was expected to be complicated, has become a fruitful meeting after Mónica García's department changed the procedure of the plan: faced with the proposal that the autonomies adhere or not to the text, Health has turned the document into an “information point”, which does not require endorsements or voting by the councilors, which will serve as a basis for future legislation.
In addition, the minister promised to study that “part of the taxation” on tobacco, which will increase as a result of the increase in the price of packs, is allocated “to health policies.” As for smoke-free spaces, they will be addressed and detailed in future legislation. The draft that the communities initially rejected did not include the express prohibition of smoking on the terraces, a measure that must be specified in the future law. The Ministry is in favor of this prohibition, but a good part of the communities are not.
The text, on which the Ministry and Health had been working for more than four years and which a few weeks ago was dusted off again by García, is based on several proposals: equate the regulation of electronic cigarette advertising with traditional advertising; agree with a farm on a new tobacco taxation that has a “return in health policies”; increase smoke-free spaces; and changing tobacco packaging to generic wrappers. These bases must now be translated into a new anti-smoking law in which 147 allegations presented in recent weeks by the communities will be taken into account.
Until this Friday, the regional government maintained its refusal to adhere to the plan. The spokesperson councilor, Marcos Ortuño, assured this Thursday that the document was “written” without rigor” and denounced that “it also lacks economic memory.”
In the last few hours, the National Committee for the Prevention of Smoking, the General Nursing Council and the Spanish Association against Cancer, among other organizations, had appealed to the administrations to reach an agreement. Both technicians from the Ministry and the autonomous communities had been working on the plan for years.
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